Saturday, 18 February 2012

I've had a busy day - strolled into Stroud, bought some 6mm resin futuristic buildings from Shaun at Dreamholme Scenics, did lunch with my wife, strolled back home, did a post on the buildings, listened to Forest Green Rovers beat Gateshead 2-1on BBC Gloucestershire, painted buildings, listened to Sunderland beat Arsenal 2-0 in FA Cup on Five Live, continued to paint buildings, ate superb Thai Green Curry cooked by my wife, watched Inspector Montalbano on TV and finally posted this blog - what a great day.

I found the 6mm shanty buildings easy to paint. Shaun has put loads of detail into them with tarpaulins, corrugated sheets, planks and a lot more. I managed to avoid all of those and went for my usual dry-brush approach.

I use 75ml tester pots from Wilkinson (Wilco) for terrain as they have a really good range of colours. I undercoated the buildings and bases in Java Bean and then dry-brushed the bases in Coffee and Sand

I blocked in the buildings with GW Adeptus Battlegrey and then did a wash with Badab Black. Finally I dry brushed with Coat D'arms Horse Tone - Bay and Wilco Sand.

A proper shanty town will have a lot more colour variation - I know that the buildings Shaun painted have loads of variety. My excuse is that this town is built entirely from a single crashed space ship. However I will be purchasing more of these and as I can never remember what colours I used then the next batch will be a different shade.

Once again an Epic Rhino is prowling the street to provide a scale guide.

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

However before I start rambling on about it here is some 15mm eye-candy painted by Rodge

A well stocked sutler frequented by the boys in blue

Is someone making a delivery or stocking up?

Something isn't right here

I'll leave it up to you to decide if it's just some good ol' boys making a few dollars US or re-supplying for Lee's next offensive

My camera work doesn't do justice to these lovely vignettes

Anyway after that treat I expect you to sit still and listen to what I have to say

I started collecting the Airfix ACW range back in the 1970s before I knew what wargaming was. I bought Donald Featherstone's Battles with Model Soldiers for my twelfth birthday and used the rules and my Airfix ACW figures to fight my first "proper" wargame.

Since then I've played a lot of ACW replacing my Airfix figures with 15mm figures from virtually every manufacturer under the Sun - Minifigs, Old Glory, Essex, Peter Pig and Peter Laing to name a few.

Finding figures for the ACW has never been a problem for me. However finding rules is a different matter. I've tried a fair selection - Johnny Reb, Circa 1863, On To Richmond, Newbury, RFCMs Civil War Battles and Fire and Fury. Only the last two, CWB and FnF, came close to giving me the sort of game I was looking for - simple but still full of ACW flavour. They both have some lovely game mechanisms but some annoying bits as well.

Rodge has been recently working on a home-grown ACW rule set and he invited me along to playtest them. He was looking for a brigade level game that was simple but required good generalship and incorporated a initial terrain setup game.